Asian Journal of Environment and Disaster Management 2010 2 4

doi: 10.3850/S1793924011000800

Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation in Agriculture and Water Sectors in the Asia-Pacific Region: Current Status, Issues, and Way Forward

S.V.R.K. Prabhakar^a and Kyoto Matsumoto^b Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), 2108-11 Kamiyamaguchi,
Hayama, Kanagawa, 240-0115 Japan. ^aprabhakar@iges.or.jp ^baquakyon26@yahoo.co.jp

ABSTRACT

Limited efforts have been made in assessing the status of mainstreaming adaptation in agriculture and water sectors globally and in the Asia-Pacific region. This paper reviews various ongoing adaptation initiatives implemented at the national level in agriculture and water sectors in some of the countries of the Asia-Pacific region and identifies issues and way forward. The review suggested that many governments have a number of initiatives, either planned or currently implemented, to adapt to climatic change in agriculture and water sectors, with a considerable progress in terms of number and nature of initiatives carried out. Most of these initiatives can be placed in categories of serendipitous adaptation and climate-proofing of development. However, most of the initiatives are in their infancy, which do not provide a clear indication of how much risk they intend to reduce in the course of their implementation, and it is difficult to assess how different they are when compared to “usual” developmental projects. This paper identifies the need for choosing win–win adaptation options, that can hold well under a broad range of climate change scenarios in the future, as a possible way forward in the absence of dependable climate change projections and vulnerability assessments.

Keywords: Mainstreaming, Agriculture, Water, Win-win adaptation.

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